Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in to another video on forgottenweapons.com
I'm Ian McCollum and today we are getting close to the end of our story on Berthier system
So today, we're going to take a look at primarily carbines, but the post-war life of the Berthier system
We're going to look at the modifications that were made throughout the 1920s and 30s
and basically what happened to this gun and why
So, there is a whole list of changes that were made between Lauren's start with
1917 with a couple things that we actually touched on in the last video and then this will go all the way up to
1939 when production of these carbines finally actually ended
between the end of the war and the beginning of world war two, somewhere between 160,000 and
250,000 more of these carbines were manufactured and in fact this particular one was accepted into military service in 1939
It's one of the very last
Now along the way France had a fairly substantial military rebuilding program
Not as effective obviously as the rebuilding program of the Germans
But they did actually put, at least tried to put a lot of work into rebuilding the military
So there were a number of priorities that they had at the end of world war one
Obviously there are a lot of things if you if you take, you know 1919, what do you do to the French military?
Well, there's a lot the cartridge that 8mm Lebel cartridge is totally obsolete
The Modern Army should not be using a rimmed cartridge should not be using a cartridge with that much taper
You really need a cartridge, that's more suitable to repeating actions
The Tube magazine, tube magazines are totally obsolete they should definitely get rid of that
So they're going to need a new infantry rifle
They're going to need a new cartridge for the infantry rifle
They're probably going to need a new light machine gun
The Chauchat was the most widely or the most numerously produced light machine gun of World War one
But it's also a completely obsolete design at this point
They need to replace that they wanted to introduce a new semi-automatic pistol of course they've been using a combination of
Mostly 1892 revolvers and Spanish made Ruby .32 caliber automatics
That weren't all that great. They got the job done, but they're not good, so they wanted a new semi-automatic pistol
They wanted a new light mortar
Mortars or something that really came into their own during world war one people realized
We're going to need more of this sort of thing they wanted to continue developing rifle grenades
That's something that the french really took a liking to during world war one
And that's just with him basically the small arms realm, so that's not even getting into aircraft, tanks and naval warships
So there's a lot going on
When people look at this and go well why on Earth were they still building these in 1939?
basically the answer is because they had priorities and
Replacing this wasn't really high up on that list so the most important thing on that list of priorities
and I think I would agree with this in terms of small arms was the light machine gun and
As an result they had actually developed a new light machine gun by 1924. It was the Châtellerault 24/29
They had also along with it as required for it, they had developed a new cartridge the 7.5mm French Cartridge
It was originally 7.5x58mm and then was redesigned in 1929 to be 7.5x54mm
We'll get into that in a separate video, but they got the new cartridge
They got a new light machine gun and it was a pretty good light machine gun
Then you can start looking at the other small arms
so the original plan had been to develop a semi-automatic rifle for the
You know fighting infantry and a bolt-action rifle for the support troops and in this way. It's very similar to how
Going into world war one they had the Lebel rifle for the infantry and had the Berthier carbine for the support troops
You don't need the full size, full complexity, full-power rifle for you know the artillery crews and the engineers and those sorts of guys
so
In order to save some money the plan was to give those guys a bolt-action rifle now that rifle would end up needing the MAS36
Which we will also touch on in some later videos
The semi-automatic rifle never quite developed or rather it developed but not quite in time for WWII, so a lot of these things took a lot
longer than people would expect them to and that's a combination of bureaucratic
institutional inertia and people's willingness and
Interest in pursuing these projects and of course the money that was able to be funded those money that went into these things so
The semi-automatic rifle project would ultimately result in MAS 44 which was put into production right at the tail end of WWII
But not in time to start the war
so
That is why you still had a lot of guys running around with these things the plan had been to replace them with a semi-auto
semi-auto never happened
Well, we still have these and they still work
So they stayed in service interestingly a lot of them would be captured by the Germans and a lot of these things would see service
on the Atlantic wall in german-occupied France, so
the French would go through a
rearmament program where they wanted to
they had the industry they didn't maybe need to build a lot of new rifles because they had a ton of guns
Floating around at the end of WWI unlike Germany where the inter allied military control commission basically
Rounded up, and destroyed millions of small arms in France, whatever
they had they still got to keep because they won so they put in a program of
refurbishing and refitting and rebuilding a lot of
Lebel rifles and also Berthier carbines and rifles
So in the process they made a few changes to the gun
So why don't we it's easier for us to show those up close so that you can see the changes
I'm actually discussing so let's go ahead and do that
The first update we'll start with is this change in front sights
From an narrow blade to this very wide, easy to pick up front post
that's something that we actually discussed in the last video and that, that was adopted in 1917 and
Basically introduced alongside the M16 pattern upgrade to the five shot magazine
Next up, in about December of 1917
The decision was made to replace the lower mounted sling swivel with a side mounted bar like this one
so that change went into effect for new guns in December of 1917
by January of 1918
ministerial Decree had come down that damaged
1890 and 1892 Carbines would now be rebuilt to the new M16
specifications with the five round magazine and all of all of the other changes we've been discussing and
In February of 1918 they actually started a program to slowly start retrofitting these sling bars onto existing
sling swivel carbines so through the course of the war that when guns came in for repair
They would be upgraded in that way even if they were already M16 carbines like this one
one kind of annoying feature about the original
M16 pattern rifles and carbines is that the original serial number was stamped on the barrel Shank right here and
Once the M16 pattern was was adopted
It was now hidden underneath this handguard
So this is annoying to collectors today because to find the date and the serial number on the barrel you have to actually take off
The front band up here, and then take off the handguard well
it was annoying to the French military as well, and so in July of 1919
When they started to refurbish all the guns in inventory or a lot of them up to M16 specification
They came down with a decree that they would start adding the serial numbers back here on the receiver
Moving along in June of 1920 they decided that they needed to fix the sights a little bit when they'd added two hand guards
The rear sight was awfully close to the handguard so in June 1920
They instituted a new pattern of sight which was it was
Calibrated the same as the existing sights
but both the front and rear sights were raised up those sights are marked with an a so there's the a on the front
and right there, you can see the a on the rear sight and that actually did make a difference on the
Left we have the new pattern of taller front sights, and you can see that those really are a little bit more visible
They're almost lined up. They're a little bit more visible than what we have on the right with the old pattern
at right about the same time in august of 1920 they
Realized that this idea to move the serial number onto the receiver was a gigantic pain, and so they came up with a new plan
They just cut a slot in the handguard so that you could see the existing serial number through it like this
at the same time they also deepened the cutout on the side of
The rear sight so that you could better see the the numbers the range numbers on the rear sight
Here's a comparison with the new pattern on the bottom and the old Pattern on the top
Obviously the new Pattern made it much easier to see what site what your sight gradients were
These carbines are all being manufactured by Châtellerault, after the war however Châtellerault doesn't necessarily make all of the receivers
During the war there was a private company called *not going to rewrite this* or something like that that
Manufactured receivers which were then provided to Châtellerault to be built into carbines
And then after the war the Tulle arsenal as you can see here started doing the same thing and in 1923
Saint-Étienne stopped making receivers, altogether they had been making them for rifles and Tulle took over, so
The the receivers that were being provided now for manufacture were primarily coming from Tulle
Just to put this in context right about the same time in 1924
That French 7.5mm rimless cartridge is standardized so while they're rebuilding these
M16 they're Berthiers they're also working on the new the next generation of small-arms
Now we're going to skip a couple years and when we get to 1926 we're going to hit one of the major
Upgrades one of the things that's very blatantly obvious today
so in late 1926 a ministerial decree went out that these were no longer needed and
For better or worse for whatever reason this was a substantial enough
Decree that it wasn't just applied to guns that happen to come in for other work
This was actually a retrofit. That was proactively done to basically every Berthier
That was still in the French inventory at that time, so new guns would be manufactured without
these clearing rods guns that did have them would be retrofitted to get rid of them and
the way that retrofit would happen would be to pull the rod out and
Fill the cleaning Rod slot with a long sliver of wood which you can you can see a little better back here
Then a new front band was designed
Which had this stacking rod on it
early on what they did was take the existing bands you can see that this still has this loop for the clearing Rod and
They would actually drill and rivet on the stacking rod, so you can see two little rivets right there on the inside
Eventually production would catch up and they would start building these with brand new front bands
which were made all as one piece so no riveting required and did not have the contour for the clearing Rod, so
unfortunately for us as collectors today the french did a really thorough job of this overhaul and
It's pretty difficult to find
Bethier carbines that still have their intact clearing rods
This was done even to things like the indochina rifles those were refurbished
so if you have one like this
That still has the Rod
it's a pretty darn good sign that the gun was not actually in French government hands by 1927
because that's when the vast majority of this work was done
just for reference sake here is one of the
M16 pattern of Indochina rifles that has also had that clearing Rod slot filled
Now moving forward a bit farther by 1930 there was a second upgrade that they decided to make and that
Was something that we can't see from the outside
But in 1909 they had decided to add an additional stronger or larger recoil lug to the back end of the receiver
To help prevent problems of stop cracking so in 1930 they decided to go back and start retrofitting pre 1909 guns with that additional larger recoil lug
in 1932 we're going to come to another upgrade that was very thoroughly done, and that was the upgrade to the 1932 N cartridge
commonly called "Balle N". And this was a redesigned version of the 8mm Lebel cartridge
That was kind of it was
Prioritized for the Hotchkiss machine guns to give them better long range capacity and actually to increase their barrel lengths there are some misunderstandings
Misconceptions about this cartridge, and we'll get into those more thoroughly in the follow-up video on the development of the cartridge itself
but for the sake of today
Updating to that cartridge require reaming the throats out on the chambers of existing guns and so that was done in
1932 and pretty much everything in French inventory had that update made to it with the odd exception of the
1914 Remington Rolling Block rifles, so all the Lebels, all the Berthiers
And then even things like the Gras rifles that have been converted to 8mm Lebel, all those got that update and they will be marked
With a big N on both the receiver and the barrel underneath the handguard
To indicate that change and this is another, another change that is difficult to find a gun that was overlooked
So if you have a gun that was not is not an marked it most likely means that gun was not in French military hands
in 1932
right about the same time in 1933 and 34
there were some changes made to the finishing procedures of these guns and
They would start adopting a phosphating or parkerizing process. Which was shortly followed by a black lacquer paint, so
having actually taken a cue from the the railroad industry and
Knowing that these rifles were seeing more and more service in colonial hands in you know particularly
unpleasant
Climates very humid climates for example. They wanted a finish that would be more resilient
So they actually ended up using a black locomotive lacquer on
The guns so you'll often find that
Weren't *didn't understand* heavily worn away now
you know some 70 years later, but that black paint was applied starting in about 1933 or 34
and you will occasionally but not always
See a "PK" mark here that is an abbreviation for "Parkérisation"
the parkerizing process that was used under the lacquer and
That pretty much brings us to the end of the upgrade the whole series of refurbs and upgrades to these guns
we have here in 1939 production barrel on a rifle that also has a
fortunately very nice november of 1939 acceptance date
And this would be just about the last of the Berthiers that was manufactured and put in the service
There you go by the beginning of WWII you had a pattern of Berthier like this
from a distance looks exactly the same as
Something made late in WWI but once you know what to look for you can see the various changes that had actually been
made
Now of course as WWII got closer
People started getting a little more serious about some of these arms development programs
And you would see in the mid to late 1930s a lot more progress than you did earlier
in the interwar period, so in 1935 the French army would adopt a new semi-automatic pistol two of them actually the
1935 A and 1935 S
in 1935 to 38 they kind of finalized the design of a new issue submachine gun although it barely got into production time
That'd be MAS 1938. The semi-automatic rifle, they had trials versions of the MAS 1940
Didn't quite make it into production they would pick that up in 44 after the liberation
All of these programs finally took hold after WWII well if you enjoyed this video if you learned something about the Berthier system after WWII today
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